For at least a handful of the 2,500 persons attending the Mountain Mud Festival Saturday, the event was a classrooom exercises.
Jake Dahlenburg of Sweet Home was there shooting three rolls of film for his black and white photography class at Linn-Benton Community College.
The sophomore attends the festival every year, usually to help out at the Kiwanis concessions stand.
Kyle Thorson and a half dozen buddies from Battle Ground High School in Battle Ground, Wash., were busy mixing a classroom project with fun.
“We’re in video production in school,” Thorson said. “We’re videotaping the mud bog thing. We’re going to take it back and turn it in.”
All seven of the participants are seniors at the school.
They mud often in their spare time, Thorson said.
Thorson’s classmates were busy taping him as he caught air racing his 1985 Dodge D50, stock with 32-inch swampers, up a hillside.
“I got it for free,” Thorson said. “Some lady was moving out of town. She just wrecked it, and she gave it to me.”
The hillsides off Berlin Road were slickened by rain all day Friday, and Dahlenburg, like many others thought “it’s a lot better than the last couple of years.”
The rain cleared up by morning, replaced by a warm, sunny day; but that didn’t dry the ground out.
The largest of the mud bogs, including three bowls of mud soup just below the largest hill climb, claimed vehicle after vehicle. Four-year volunteer Jason Van Eck of Sweet Home was running a bulldozer to pull trapped 4x4s out of the bogs.
“I’m playing rescuer,” Van Eck said. “I’ve probably pulled out five, and Jared Ritchie probably pulled out at least that many. The day’s not over yet.”
Six-year mud festival veteran Rian Waddell of Vancouver, Wash., was busy doing the same in the toughest of the bogs. He was planning his own attempt at that bog after pulling a half-dozen other drivers out.
“Last year, I grenaded my front end right there,” Waddell said pointing to the bog. “I still played after that. It’s just the front end was busted.”
Waddell won the Top Truck Challenge with his 1972 Suburban, he said. That’s a major competition put on by Four Wheeler magazine. It tests vehicles on rocks, mud, hills, towing and more.
After one of Waddell’s friends showed up at the bog to pull him out if needed, Waddell took his own run at it — And made it.
“That was the first truck I’ve seen go through it,” Van Eck said. He had been sitting above the bog most of the time he wasn’t busy pulling people out of the muck.
Waddell went into and out of the bog to the delight of spectators several more times before he managed to get his rig stuck too.
“Friday rain was great,” Van Eck said. “This (the sun) is perfect, but I don’t think they’d care if they were in the rain.”
Volunteers brought water up to the site all week long to prepare for a third dry year at the site, also in its third year. When it started raining, they were able to stop bringing the water in.
“It helped out a lot,” volunteer Rayden Johnson said. “It made lots of mud.”
John Curl of Sheridan loved it.
“I almost flipped my truck over,” he said. He drove up an embankment, and his rig fell to the side and came back down. At one point it was past straight up and down. He ended up driving over things that fell out of the bed of his pickup.
Curl attended the event at Foster for seven years. This was the first time he was at the Berlin Road location. He likes it better with its many features, including hill climbs and the obstacle course.
The Mountain Mud Festival is organized by the South Santiam Four-Wheelers Association.